Baltimore Hebrew University, grappling with a long-term decline in enrollment, is in negotiations to become a part of Towson University, officials said. The state Board of Regents has informally indicated its approval of the talks.
The plans are not complete, but the heads of both institutions said they believe negotiations will succeed.
As part of Towson, Baltimore Hebrew would maintain its identity, said Jonathan Lowenberg, chairman of the board of the 90-year-old college.
"Baltimore Hebrew University, as with any number of small universities around the country, faces financial issues and the ability to grow our programs as we think is appropriate," he said. Last spring it began talks with several universities, of which Towson appeared the most enthusiastic.
Towson President Robert Caret said the partnership would be a "win-win" by bringing an established program into a university with a growing presence in the Jewish community.
Towson's Jewish Studies minor is strong, he said, and last fall Towson was selected by the board of regents to establish a Center for Excellence to study the Holocaust and issues of genocide and human rights.
"It adds a dimension that we never could have achieved on our own - taking a very mature series of programs and melding them into our campus," Caret said, referring to the proposed partnership.
Towson has about 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students on its 328-acre York Road campus.
Baltimore Hebrew's enrollment, which was at 370 in 1994, declined to 118 by 2007, most of them graduate students, according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission.
Lowenberg said he did not have exact figures for this year but rumors about the school's future have made recruiting difficult.
The school also needs to find a new location by 2010, when The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, which owns the college's Park Heights Avenue location in Northwest Baltimore, will use the property for social service programs.
Founded in 1919 as a Jewish teachers college, Baltimore Hebrew is nondenominational but has a Judaic academic focus. Primarily a graduate school, the college says it produces 20 percent of the country's master's degrees in Jewish education. It is one of five such Hebrew colleges in the country; the others are in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York.
